3.  How did they show their love for the Church of Christ?

4.  What aroused their jealousy for the Church?

5.  How numerous were the Covenanters at this time?

6.  Give the character of Rutherford as a typical Covenanter.

7.  Quote some of his sayings.

8.  Relate his triumphant death.

9.  On what condition may we expect to be strong in the Lord?

XXV.

Expelling the ministers.—­A.D. 1662.

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”  In the martyrdom of Argyle and Guthrie blood of the best quality had been shed, and the most precious seed had been sown.  Therefore the harvest will surely be great, the field will yield an hundredfold.

The fidelity of Argyle and of Guthrie, their devotion to Christ and the Covenant, reappeared in hundreds of noblemen and in hundreds of ministers all over Scotland.  Overawe and subdue the Covenanters by sacrificing their prominent leaders?  Their foes mistook their spirit and underestimated their strength, knowing little of the deathless principles of the Covenant that carried them into the service of the Lord, not counting their lives dear for Christ’s sake.  The Covenanters overawed!  Will the sun faint and fail beneath the gale?  Will the oak wither at the loss of a few boughs?  Will veterans recoil at the first fire?  Rather, will not the fighting spirit be roused?

At this time the Covenanters numbered about 1,000 ministers, and 100,000 communicants.  They had 900 congregations.  The ministers were not all staunch; the leaven of compromise had been working; half the number had become more or less infected.  They had weakened in the Covenant and yielded to King Charles under his vicious administration.  The political whirlpool in its outside circles was drawing them slowly yet surely toward its horrible vortex.

The sifting time had come for the Covenanters.  God knows how to shake His sieve to clean the wheat.  He seeks not bulk, but value.  Numbers are nothing to Him; character is everything.  He would rather have Gideon with 300 men up to the standard, than thirty regiments below it.  He preferred one-tenth of Israel to the whole number, and sifted the nation in Nebuchadnezzar’s sieve to get the good wheat separated from the inferior.

The Covenanted Church became loaded down with chaff, weevil, shrunken grains, and broken kernels—­low grades of religious life—­and the Lord shook the bad out of the Church by making it exceedingly painful and difficult to stay in.  The way of faithfulness was filled with hardships.  God made Covenant-keeping dangerous and expensive.  The followers of Christ were compelled to take up the cross and carry it.  If true to their Lord, they must go outside the camp, bearing His reproach.  If they keep conscience pure, they must accept cruel mockings, scourging, imprisonment, banishment, and death.  In this way would God separate unto himself a “peculiar people, zealous of good works.”  The others may be of use in degree, yet to prevent general defection and universal declension, God winnows the wheat.